How Dragon Age Inquisition Improves Dragon Combat

Dragon Age Inquisition will completely change the way its players fight dragons when it releases later this year.

“When I’m attacking a dragon, I’m not just hitting all of it,” producer Cameron Lee told IGN. “I’m hitting its leg, I’m hitting its wing, and that should matter. It should matter where I attack a dragon...that’s something we’re really trying to lean on, and when we come to E3, we’ll really be able to show it in all its glory.”

Dragon combat isn’t changed in mechanics alone -- the types of dragons you’ll take on differs considerably from previous games.

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Dragon Age Inquisition E3 2014

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“There will be multiple, different types of dragons with different breath attacks, elemental attacks...some dragons are more armored than others,” Lee said. “That difference in elements, armor types, and properties of the dragon definitely inform how you approach them from a combat perspective. The team synergy, the party synergy, the difference in abilities in combat can strengthen your ability to fight this thing.”

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It should matter where I attack a dragon.

To that end, there are multiple differences in the way those dragons behave during battle.

Dragons will destroy the world around them, “which we definitely haven’t done in the past, and I haven’t seen any games do,” Lee said.

“They definitely spend a lot more time flying in combat, leaping around the battlefield, so they’re not that typical, static kind of creature anymore. They’ll charge at you, pounce around the battlefield, take off, do strafing runs, they’ll come back. There’s a whole different suite of locomotion mechanics and movement mechanics, which are a challenge.” Those behaviors, it appears, could change if players disable legs, wings, or other dragon parts.

As Lee explained, we’ll see more from Dragon Age Inquisition at E3 in June. For the full list of confirmed games at E3 this year, check out the IGN E3 2014 wiki.